International Journal for the Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning
Volume 7 | Number 2
Article 25
7-2013
Does Boyer’s Integrated Scholarships Model Work
on the Ground? An Adaption of Boyer’s Model for
Scholarly Professional Development
William E. Boyd
Southern Cross University, [email protected]
Recommended Citation
Boyd, William E. (2013) "Does Boyer’s Integrated Scholarships Model Work on the Ground? An Adaption of Boyer’s Model for
Scholarly Professional Development," International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Vol. 7: No. 2, Article 25.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2013.070225
Does Boyer’s Integrated Scholarships Model Work on the Ground? An
Adaption of Boyer’s Model for Scholarly Professional Development
Abstract
Boyer’s model of four scholarships as an integrated system engaging and integrating the scholarships of
discovery, integration, application, and teaching is being increasingly adopted both by individual scholars and
institutions. Here I reflect on my own adoption of this approach almost a decade ago, and I describe one
application, its use in defining my professional academic profile. While this does not directly address issues of
pedagogy, it provides a sound basis for improved pedagogical practice in higher education. I assess my
adoption of Boyer’s model against several benchmarks grounded in the social life of academe: success of
promotion; mentoring peers into their own professional development and promotion cycles; the
development of a integrating research program; and as a basis for curriculum review and development.
Drawing on this reflection, I conclude that Boyer’s model offers both promise and applicability across many
domains of university scholarly life, and thus provides a sound basis for enhanced university teaching and
learning.
Keywords
Boyer, Integrated scholarship, Professional development, Curriculum development, Academic mentoring,
Performance benchmarking, Higher education
IJ-SoTL, Vol. 7 [2013], No. 2, Art. 25
Does Boyer’s Integrated Scholarships Model Work on the Ground? An
Adaption of Boyer’s Model for Scholarly Professional Development
W.E. Boyd
Southern Cross University
Lismore, New South Wales, Australia
[email protected]
Abstract
Boyer’s model of four scholarships as an integrated system engaging and integrating the
scholarships of discovery, integration, application, and teaching is being increasingly
adopted both by individual scholars and institutions. Here I reflect on my own adoption
of this approach almost a decade ago, and I describe one application, its use in defining
my professional academic profile. While this does not directly address issues of
pedagogy, it provides a sound basis for improved pedagogical practice in higher
education. I assess my adoption of Boyer’s model against several benchmarks grounded
in the social life of academe: success of promotion; mentoring peers into their own
professional development and promotion cycles; the development of a integrating
research program; and as a basis for curriculum review and development. Drawing on
this reflection, I conclude that Boyer’s model offers both promise and applicability across
many domains of university scholarly life, and thus provides a sound basis for enhanced
university teaching and learning.
Keywords: Boyer, integrated scholarship, professional development, curriculum
development, academic mentoring, performance benchmarking, higher education
Introduction
Boyer’s (1990) now famous proposal that scholarship may be defined as an integrated
approach to an academic’s life has become an important model in which university
academics and institutions now frame their scholarship. In this article, I reflect on my
personal use of Moyer’s model, over the last decade, in defining my own scholarship,
and in supporting my own efforts at peer mentoring. While this reflection does not
directly address issues of pedagogy, I argue that it provides a sound basis for improved
pedagogical practice in the University. Having used the model for nearly a decade as the
foundation to my role as a teaching university scholar, I now find myself in a good
position to ask the question, does it work?
Boyer’s Model of Four Integrated Scholarships
Boyer’s evolving model of four scholarships (Boyer, 1990, 1996), bringing together the
scholarships of discovery, integration, application, and teaching, naturally aroused
considerable interest amongst those concerned about the scholarship of teaching and
learning, especially in higher education (e.g. Starr-Glass, 2011; Bailey & Munroe, 2013).
There is a growing literature on the adoption of Boyer’s model and its principles and
practices across the disciplines and in expanding the scope of SoTL-informed teaching
and learning (e.g. Ragland, 2008; Dewar & Bennett, 2010; Woodhouse, 2010). Many
writers focus on the advantages to curriculum development and the improvement and
increasing effectiveness of teaching – what Starr-Glass (2011, p.5), for example, notes
is a Boyer-influenced extension of SoTL, that “goes beyond peers and sharing that
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extents to students … [according the] proper priority to the idea that teaching is an
activity that emerges in collaboration with students as partners in learning …” – and
indeed many have reviewed Boyer’s ideas in detail.
What becomes clear in such writing is the close nexus between scholars’ sense of
professional identity and what they see to be their enhanced capacity to deliver good
teaching and learning. Although it is often unstated or understated, the role of Boyer’s
model appears to play a significant part in the (implicit) professional development of
individual scholars, as much as in the (explicit) enhancement of pedagogical practice. It
is this implicit role that I examine here, set within the context that it plays into a wider
pedagogical arena.
There are those, of course, who critique the approach proposed by Boyer. Gurm (2013),
for example, has recently questioned the seemingly positivist approach implicit, in her
view, in current adoptions of Boyer’s model: “It would be wise”, she suggests, “for the
academy to put on breaks [sic] and critically reflect on the direction the canon is moving
… the academy must become …a 'learning organization' … There are paradigms other
than natural science”. Others identify practical issues. On the one hand, some draw on
role of Boyer in developing scholarship-driven pedagogy. Colbeck & Michael (2006), for
example, conclude that “reframing academic work as public scholarship fosters faculty
engagement in and administrative and peer evaluation of professional work as an
integrated whole that is more than the sum of the parts [and that] faculty that conduct
public scholarship view their discovery, integration, application and teaching scholarships
as a complex and integrated public resource leads to publication-worthy discovery while
also actively engaging students in meaningful learning with real-world problems in
partnership with the community outside academe” (p.17). Others, however, focus on the
issue of academic professional development. Braxton et al. (2002) comment that “an
important question emerges: To what extent do college and university faculty members
engage in the work of each of the four domains of scholarship?”. They argue that,
despite the significance of Boyer's work, little research had addressed this question,
although their review of the extent to which Boyer’s four scholarship domains had
become institutionalized in higher education came to an optimistic conclusion.
It seems, however, that whatever critique is raised, there is, across the higher education
sector, a general enthusiasm for, and uptake of, Boyer’s ideas. Cox & Harris (2010) are
not atypical when they describe the use of Boyer in assisting academics to “engage in
diverse pedagogical experiences … [through] … the scholarship of teaching at various
stages of their academic careers” (p.3). Many academics have taken the model on board
with gusto. Elliott-Johns (2011, p.3) describes this adoption eloquently:
Very soon afterwards, this timely nudge resulted in my delving wholeheartedly
into the literature and the discovery of Boyer’s fourfold vision of scholarship,
representing a highly significant turning point in my own development as a
teacher educator, researcher, and writer. It was, in fact, something of an
epiphany! … Boyer’s model resonated with me, and opened up whole new ways of
thinking about my role(s) as a teacher educator, researcher, and ‘scholarly’
writer.
Institutionally, Boyer’s model has also helped frame formal processes. In my university,
for example, the relatively new promotions, professional management, development and
review (PMDR) policies and processes especially, are directly linked to, and structured
around, Boyer’s four scholarships. The structure of current PMDR and promotion
application documents is fully influenced by Boyer’s construction of scholarship, and the
University’s Guide to the Academic Staff Portfolio (Anon., 2008, p.2), a central plank of
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the PMDR and promotion’s processes, introduces this adoption, if slightly obliquely, as
follows.
Traditionally at [the University] academic practice has incorporated three main
pursuits – teaching, research and community engagement. The University has
treated these as independent streams of work, with little recognition for the
integrated nature of academic work and its connection to the broader mission of
the University. Academic staff, however, are well versed in the challenges this
model presents and have struggled to accurately assess, review and develop a
holistic approach to their academic practice given the constraints inherent in this
approach. Ernest Boyer (1990) is his landmark publication Scholarship
Reconsidered: Priorities for the Professoriate reconceptualised an expanded and
integrated view of academic practice through four areas of Scholarship … broadly
defin[ing] scholarship as creative intellectual work that is validated by peers and
communicated [and] identif[ying] six standards by which all scholarship might be
measured: clear goals, appropriate procedures, adequate resources, effective
communication, significant results, thorough self critique. … As well as these, SCU
recognises the importance of Service to the University, professions and the
community.
Personal Engagement
I am one academic who has taken on Boyer’s ideas as part of my efforts to define and
evaluate my own professional development as an academic. I am now in a position to
reflect on my own adoption and adaptation of the model. I adopted the model to initially
to frame my own scholarships and academic persona, but I have subsequently applied in
it in several contexts. Here, drawing on the validity of reflective practice (Day, 2002;
Larrivee, 2002), I review my adoption and the path it has taken in developing the
understanding of my own career, pedagogy and role as an academic mentor, with the
aim of better understanding the process I have adopted, and, in doing so, improving my
own scholarly professional practices, and those of others I mentor. I am echoing Moon’s
(2004, p.8) definition of reflection as the “mulling over of ideas – the reorganising of
them – that have already been learnt the considering of how, for example, what has
been learnt will fit into the patterns of the workplace to improve practice”. In particular,
Glassick et al.’s (1997) characterization of Boyer’s model appealed to me. I was also
influenced by Mick Healey’s (pers. com, March 2006) description of its adoption in Hong
Kong, where it has been used to structure the 1999 and 2006 Research Assessment
Exercise (RAE), refocusing research not as an isolated activity, but as one that should
support and illuminate teaching and learning. Accepting this approach assists in restructuring the entire approach to scholarship.
In describing my personal path from initial adoption and adaption of the model, through
its application in the spheres of promotion, mentoring professional development and
curriculum development, I engage what I consider to have been a significant redefinition
of my own scholarship. I have tended towards broad scholarly interests. As a
geographer, this may be unsurprising: starting with an inherent interest in landscape
history, I have worked in the fields of geology, landscape evolution, archaeology, and
environmental history. Inevitably, these fields of study have brought me to working also
with cultural heritage and its management, to environmental planning and management,
and thus to social and cultural geography. The pedagogical demands of this diversity of
interest are equally broad. Simultaneously, I have been engaged in the scholarship and
governance of teaching and learning for two decades. My more focused colleagues were
puzzled at what it was I actually specialize in. My early effort at defining this expansive
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(and expanding) field of scholarly interest into something seemingly unified – as I was
required to do in review and promotion contexts – was clumsy. I created a statement of
what I called my “scholarly program”, an evolving and expanding statement of what I do
as an academic. This attempted to capture all my activity under a single statement:
“Understanding human-environment processes, based on global historic case studies,
applied to contemporary environmental and landscape management”.
As the years went by, the program statement became increasingly detailed, and, I now
acknowledge, decreasingly unified. In due course the statement had become a list of
lists, of research themes (3), research projects (many), teaching themes (3), subjects
taught (many), and service themes (4). I eventually inserted a statement, as I became
conscious of Boyer’s ideas: “Conceptual grounding: Teaching, research and service to
the University integrated through the four scholarships of discovery, teaching,
application & integration”. As a unifying of integrating statement of my scholarship,
despite the inserted rhetoric of Boyer, it had lost its way.
At this stage, I needed to redefine my diverse academic profile into a unified agenda. I
had, perhaps fortunately, arrived at this conclusion before my University had. In
adopting Boyer’s model, albeit via Glassick et al. and Healey, I was able to commence a
redefinition of my scholarly persona. Boyer’s six principles, later to be synthesized by my
own University as “clear goals, appropriate procedures, adequate resources, effective
communication, significant results, thorough self critique”, allowed me to identify
commonalities in my work, higher order links. I started describing the totality of my
academic work via statements of (i) a common scholarly question, (ii) a common
heuristic to address this question, and (iii) a common operational approach.
In identifying and being able describe the former two, the common question and the
common heuristic, I adopted Glassick et al.’s definitions of Boyer’s four scholarships as
my operational approach. I was thus able to make claims, with demonstrable evidence,
that I use these scholarships to integrate my research, teaching and service. I was able
to better claim that my work was a continuum of action, method and perspective; my
scholarship a single project. This was a claim later validated by successful promotion to
full professor. Subsequent to this, I have used the model in mentoring other staff in their
promotional process, in framing research as the co-director of my university’s TeachingResearch Nexus Staff Development Project, and in mentoring early career staff.
In my 2008 promotion submission document, I described the “foundation of my scholarly
life” (Appendix 1). This statement continues to guide my overall approach as a scholar
and academic. References in the statement to “teaching”, “research & scholarship” and
“leadership & service” reflect the organization of promotion documents at the time; this
was before the University’s adoption of Boyer’s ideas as an organizing frame. Perhaps
more importantly, as a geographer, I have a natural inclination towards the visual and
spatial. Figure 1 represents my efforts to depict the diversity of my scholarly activity as
a unified entity, based round my visualization of Boyer’s four scholarships and their
relationships. It is this visualization that I have found to be most useful in subsequent
peer mentoring.
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Bill Boyd: Understanding people-environment
Figure 1: “My work
is a continuum Integrating
of action, method
and perspective:
relationships:
scholarly
actionmy scholarship a single
project …”: visualization of my activity as a scholar and academic, as integrated scholarly action,
through
Four
Scholarships
model
framed through Boyer’s
modelthe
of Four
Scholarships
.
Cultural
heritage
management
GEOSCIENCES
Geoarchaeology
Quaternary geology
Environmental history
Social
construction
theory
RESEARCH
DISCOVERY
Environmental
history,
& archaeology
Cultural
heritage
management
INTEGRATION
PEDAGOGY
Environmental
management
TEACHING
LAPPLICATION
GOVERNANCE
Environmental
management
& planning
Social
perspectives on
environmental
issues
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Education
Service to the
University
LANDSCAPE
“My work is a continuum of action, method and perspective: my scholarship a
single project …”: Does “Boyer” Work?
In considering the effect of such a statement, and before evaluating its contribution, I
note that, in reflection – the statement is now several years old, and I now have the
benefit of hindsight – this synthesis is quite a lengthy and abstract statement. One
reviewer recently commented on it being hard to understand. I find this to be an
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interesting reflection, especially since, at the time of writing, I found the composition of
an abstract statement it to be a useful way to work. The abstract nature of this writing, I
believe, helped me step beyond the day-to-day work and the individual actions of my
professional life, and express the larger, unifying process. Interestingly, the
‘abstractedness’ of the statement did not seem to be a problem for either promotion
panel members or other colleagues at the time. Indeed, during mentoring of colleagues
later, the abstracted nature of the statement seems to have been helpful, in that they,
individually, could insert their own concepts and experiences into the text; they were
reading the abstract statement in their own terms. Furthermore, while I drew on the
unifying heuristic of ‘landscape’ as a concept and content theme for all of my work, it is
also interesting to reflect that at no time did any of my peers and colleagues seek
clarification on, how, for example, ‘landscape’ works to integrated my scholarship of
teaching and learning.
The important point here is that the exact content of the statement is not so relevant.
What is important is that a statement of this type has been crafted as a vehicle with
which to express the integratedness of my field of scholarship, which had previously
been considered to comprise a set of separate and seemingly unrelated or only partially
related entities. The heuristic of ‘landscape’ is, in this case, merely a theme; the same
statement could apply to any unifying content theme by any scholar working an in any
discipline from any specific perspective; I would now probably use a different theme. In
making such a statement, I am suggesting that the disciplinary focus of much
scholarship of teaching and learning (e.g. Clegg’s (2008, p.3) statement that “The way
SoTL has approached making connections between scholarship and practice has been
through the glue of disciplinarity”) can be transcended. Undoubtedly, discipline-specific
‘signature pedagogies’ (sensu Poole et al., 2007) are important. However, where we
adopt SoTL practices and concepts to assist our professional development as scholars
sensu lato rather than disciplinary specialists sensu stricto, we need to transcend
disciplines. A discussion of my use of ‘landscape’ as a heuristic in my professional
statement belongs in another paper, a discipline-specific one.
Underlying my approach to an integrated scholarship is my understanding of the concept
of scholarship of teaching and learning as an integrated and conscious engagement with
my academic practice. While acknowledging that SoTL takes many forms (Huber, 2011),
I work within the practice and praxis of scholarship as a conscious engagement with the
act of being a scholar. In this sense, I am thinking about more than individual
applications of scholarship to teaching or research through, for example, scholarly
teaching, research-informed teaching, etc., or about discipline-specific developments
and transformations. This approach is what Huber (2010, p.71) describes as, in another
context (the caring of students), an approach that attempts to “sustain teachers'
motivation by [directing] the professor's attention outward, towards inquiry into their
students' learning [and] inwards, encouraging exploration of “the inner landscape of a
teacher's life””; this approach, she importantly notes, “oppose[s] a narrow view of
pedagogy as simply technique”.
By ‘conscious engagement with the act of being a scholar’, I seek to express the need to
examine my own practice through reflection, investigation and expression, and from that
understand the practice as an explicit and deliberate set of informed actions. In practical
terms, this, as Doyle & Herteis describe for scholarship of teaching (2005, p.1), “involves
planning, assessing, and modifying one’s teaching and applying to it the same “exacting
standards” of evaluation as those used in research”. This approach demands, as noted
by Leggett & Tepper (2011, p.100), a “clear methodological approach … if purposeful
research and scholarly activity in relation to teaching and learning in higher education is
to occur”. Such definition can readily be extended to all the forms of scholarship
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identified by Boyer. There are, indeed, strong parallels with the teaching-research nexus,
which can be seen either as a whole-of-profession approach or as a series of specific
forms of integrated teaching-research interventions (Boyd et al., 2010, 2012). The
nexus, however, works best as a deliberate, structured and informed approach to the
merging of research and teaching as a characteristic approach to teaching and learning
in higher education.
Buddhist thinking makes a distinction between ‘consciousness’ and ‘awareness’.
Consciousness means being in the present. Awareness means you know you are in the
present. This distinction can usefully be applied to SOTL considerations as a whole-ofprofession approach versus an approach to individual actions. SoTL as ‘awareness’ allows
for Leggitt & Tepper’s “purposeful research and scholarly activity in relation to teaching
and learning in higher education”.
From a personal perspective, my articulation of Boyer, and my adoption and adaption of
his ideas, have been very self-satisfying. I feel more comfortable in my role as a scholar
engaging widely across the disciplines, in my pedagogical capacity, and in my ability to
fulfill what I see to be the job description of a university-based academic: to create and
disseminate new knowledge. Feelings are fine, however. It is also possible to engage a
more critical evaluation of my approach. In doing so, I respond to a core process of the
scholarship of teaching and learning, the use of data to make informed decisions, what
Poole et al. (2007, p.1) call “the use of well-collected data to inform decisions regarding
constructive change”. Furthermore, the forms of data I offer reflect the reality of daily
life as an academic. Huber (2009, p.1), in investigating the transmission and
dissemination of the lessons of SoTL (“How can the lessons faculty gain through inquiry
and innovation … be of use to colleagues teaching elsewhere?”, the very purpose of this
paper), observed that while much is to be gained by turning to theory and method, a
stronger understanding can be derived from the “social life” of academe.
There has been a tendency to look for answers to these questions in matters of
theory and method – whether a study’s conceptual apparatus and design assure
or limit the wider applicability or generalizability of its findings …. I suggest that
while theory and method can be critical factors at certain stages in the itinerary
of the scholarship of teaching and learning, the very possibility of pedagogical
travel is better understood as a function of the work’s social life instead.
Here, therefore, I offer evidence against four benchmarks of activities that are embedded
in the social life of academe and the academic: (i) success in professional promotion; (ii)
success in peer mentoring; (iii) success in developing cross-disciplinary research; and
(iv) success in curriculum development. There are others, but I briefly consider only
these here. Each provides an opportunity to review the process and relationships
between this scholarly model and the daily pragmatic of being a university- based
scholar. Elsewhere, I have demonstated the power of benchmarking academic activities
in reflecting on and assessing academic processes and practices (Boyd et al.,
2010).
Success in Professional Promotion
Academic promotion is necessarily fraught with uncertainty, especially for those with a
tradition of teaching and learning in their scholarly profile. Not only does university
teaching appear to be less highly valued than other forms of scholarship (e.g. Young,
2006), but bringing a diverse academic background – and a submission with evidence of
outputs across several disciplines – to an academic promotions committee is risky
(Chalmers, 2011; Vardi & Quin, 2011). Non-conventional professional activity can
adversely influence the success of promotion (e.g. Thomas et al., 2004, Klingensmith &
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Anderson, 2006). Having failed to convince the promotions committee once, despite the
then-recent award of a significant higher degree, a DSc (Boyd, 2005), it was necessary
for me to find a structure for presenting my diverse scholarship as an integrated one
with an inherent internal logic. Boyer provided that model, and the outcome was
success. It allowed me to make a more coherent case, and it allowed the committee to
accept diversity as unity.
This decision was significant. At that time, while my university was tending towards a
Boyer-influenced model of promotion processes, it still focused on three independent
pillars of scholarship: Teaching, Research & Scholarship, and Leadership & Service.
Applicants were explicitly required to address these independently, and the committee
decision process was constructed around levels of (independent) performance in each
area. I took the risk of commencing the interview with a statement of intent: I would
present an integrated account of my scholarship to demonstrate that the integrated
nature of my diverse scholarship was the outcome of my deliberate choice of
professional strategy; I would not talk to the individual pillars of scholarship. I was able
to do this in the confidence that Boyer provided an intellectual rigour to this approach.
My action must have forced the committee to re-evaluate its decision-making process,
which I can only presume to have been done in their confidence in Boyer’s scaffolding of
the issue. At no point in the interview process was I challenged on the validity of the
approach. Building on the growth of the recognition and rewarding of teaching and the
scholarship of teaching in higher education (Huber, 2005; Chalmers, 2011), such
success reflects the value of responding to Poole et al.’s 2007 call for “well-collected
data”, in this case to assist my university to make an “inform[ed] decision regarding
constructive change” (i.e. my promotion).
Success in Peer Mentoring
Mentoring junior colleagues is an important part of academic culture (Schrodt et al.,
2003; Boyd & Horstmanshof, 2013). Following my own promotion, I have used my
model of Boyer’s ideas in mentoring other staff during their own promotion efforts. The
obvious benchmark is in their successful promotion, and for many this was achieved.
In using my own experience and model as a springboard for such mentoring, each
mentee responded differently. Some took some time to adjust to the concept of an
integrated scholarship, while others adopted it readily. Likewise, some appeared to
adopt it conceptually with ease, whereas others understood it more coherently in
practical terms. Questions and concerns that arose during mentoring usually reflected
two pressures: (i) the pressure on teaching academics who feel overloaded with teaching
and expected to conduct more research than they (feel they) can manage; and (ii) the
pressure of the received model of teaching, research and service as disparate activities.
The degree to which they adopted the model, and the way they did it, also varied: selfconfidence, academic experience, the reach of their various scholarships, and willingness
to step away from received conceptions of their role as an academic all seem to have
played a part. Nevertheless, all my mentees could, after some discussion, clearly
articulate the professional choices that they had made. In most cases they
acknowledged that these had often been, at least in part, deliberate choices.
It is tempting to think that this positive outcome simply reflected a situation in which
both my mentees and myself did not have a unified narrative until we ‘found’ Boyer.
However, on reflection, I now consider that Boyer’s model provided a vehicle (or an
excuse?) to be explicit about the pre-existing unified narrative that all scholars have (cf.
Cloke, 1994). It is my impression that the mentoring process did not so much as create
something new, but helped us to understand our situations more clearly. Having Boyer’s
model as a frame assisted greatly.
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In practical terms, some applicants chose to draft visual expressions of their integrated
scholarship along the lines of Figure 1, while others chose to adopt the language of
Boyer; all drafted statements describing their scholarly vision. A strong theme emerging
from the mentoring discussions, regardless of eventual success, was that these
academics became better at clearly articulating the values of their often-unconventional
career paths. Using the language of Boyer allowed them to demonstrate that the choices
they had made in shaping their career had been deliberate and had followed a logic,
regardless of whether they conformed to the traditional university expectations that still
underlie promotions processes. This is common in a university such as mine, where a
strong focus on applied and vocational disciplines results in academics developing career
paths that differ from conventional university expectations (e.g. that include more
teaching and less research, or in which research is substituted by consulting,
professional development or community development activities). Taking control of career
choices is important in career development (Emmerling & Cherniss, 2003). Feedback
from promotions committees commented positively on this clarity, and applicants
reported on the empowering effects of explicitly expressing their deliberate choices in
how they shaped their careers (cf. Di Fabia et al., 2013).
Success in Developing Cross-disciplinary Research
One of the significant outcomes of developing my understanding of scholarship as an
integrated activity was a success in establishing, developing and running an actionlearning based professional development and teaching and learning scholarship research
program focusing on the teaching-research nexus. This was envisaged as a team-based
research and professional development project, with the team co-directors being the
then Faculty’s Associate Dean of Teaching & Learning (myself) and Associate Dean of
Research and Research Training, with co-directors from each of the university’s Division
of Research and Centre for Teaching & Learning; we became co-directors of what
became our university’s Teaching-Research Nexus Staff Development Project. The
organization of this project drew initially on benchmarking models of teaching-research
nexus success, and was directly informed by Boyer’s ideas. It explicitly sought to
converge scholarly research, education and professional development in a series of
activities in which the conventional boundaries were deliberately ignored, and was driven
by simultaneous aims to improve participants’ research and pedagogical capacities and
skills.
Outcomes of this project have been published (Boyd et al., 2010, 2012). The ethos
underlying the Teaching-Research Nexus Staff Development Project has been extended
to other professional development mentoring projects what engage early career
academics in SoTL-based scholarly research and publishing, again all aimed at improving
individuals’ research and teaching scholarship (Boyd & Horstmanshof, 2013).
Success in Curriculum Development
A final indicator of the effective impact of my shift towards a focus on Boyer’s concepts
lies in an approach I adopted in reviewing and revising part of an undergraduate
curriculum. Building on an approach to first year undergraduate teaching that sought to
merge teaching and research modes as a unified pedagogical approach (Boyd & Laird,
2006), this development saw a shift from skills and syllabus focus to problem based
learning, recognizing the relationships between research, enquiry, learning and
application, and the benefits that developing this relationship amongst first year
university students could have (Boyd, 2011). More recently, I continue to drawn on the
same ethos, as I help embed research practice and ethics in a Masters course, as a
deliberate, and demonstrably successful, pedagogical approach to practitioner (rather
than researcher) education (Grace et al., submitted).
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Does Boyer’s Integrated Scholarships Model Work on the Ground?
Conclusion
Boyer’s constructions of academic scholarship, and, importantly, his claims of the
essential importance of integrating these scholarships, have had a significant and
growing impact on university scholarship, at least in Australia, over the last few years.
Individual personal and institutional responses to Boyer will, and do, vary. Here I have
described the way I have adopted and adapted Boyer’s ideas to assist in my own selfdefinition as a scholar, allowing me to draw together diverse strands of my own
scholarship and present these as a unified continuum. While my review does not directly
address issues of pedagogy, nor does it critique the specific form of adaptation, it
demonstrates that adoption per se of Boyer’s ideas as a professional development frame
for scholars provides a sound basis for improved pedagogical practice. I conclude that
Boyer’s integrated scholarship model offers significant promise, and, as do other
reviewers drawing on case studies of practical application of Boyer’s ideas, I find that it
is applicable across many domains of university scholarly life. Benchmarking measures,
based on the reality of the social life of academe – in my case, success in supporting
faculty promotion, professional mentoring, developing integrating SoTL research, and
curriculum development – provide a basis to reflect on, and thus test and validate my
version of adopting Boyer’s ideas. It does not, however, imply that this adaptation is the
only possibility, and indeed the evidence from the responses of my mentees suggest that
flexibility in the form of adoption is important. Nevertheless, my reflections give me
confidence that this adoption provides a sound basis for enhanced university teaching
and learning.
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge Mick Healey and his tireless efforts at promoting SoTL ideas and
practices. I also wish to thank my former Head of School, Prof. Serwan Baban, for
persistently cutting me off after the first sentence when I tried to expand the definition
of what I do as a scholar. I also wish to thank the (then) Centre for Teaching and
Learning at Southern Cross University for hosting me at one of their seminars back in
2009, and the audience for letting me air my earlier thoughts on this reflection. I also
thank the Dean of the then Faculty of Health & Applied, Prof. Jenny Graham, for
supporting the Faculty’s and then University’s Teaching-Research Nexus Staff
Development Project as the first staff-wide practical application of Boyer’s ideas. This
article was written during my Visiting Professorship at the Australian Studies Centre,
University of Barcelona, supported by a study leave grant from Southern Cross
University.
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Appendix 1
My 2008 statement of the “foundation of my scholarly life”, used to contextualize my
promotion submission, and framed around Boyer’s ideas. This statement was written in
response to a requirement, in a promotion process, for a statement of the conceptual
foundation to the applicant’s scholarship. The ensuing application documented evidence
to support claims of concept-led professional practice.
All my academic work links through (i) a common scholarly question, (ii) a common heuristic to
address this question, and (iii) a common operational approach.
The Scholarly Question Understanding human-environment relationships and interactions, and
their implications for environmental management: Environmental management is about human
behaviour, itself contingent on environmental condition. I examine that contingency via peopleenvironment relationships, using both contemporary socio-environmental tensions and the global
historic socio-environment record to interrogate processes of modern social ands socioenvironmental behaviour.
The Heuristic Landscape: Landscape, the integration of social and natural processes, provides
both data and frame for research and teaching. Landscape is physical, social and cultural, yielding
measurable and recordable evidence of environmental practice and agency, and a network of
projects for my scholarly work in prehistoric, historic and contemporary environments.
The Operational Approach Boyer’s Four Scholarships: The work of the professoriate comprises
four interlinked functions: discovery, integration, application, and teaching. Discovery is
scholarship of commitment to knowledge for its own sake, freedom of enquiry, and disciplined
investigation. Integration is scholarship connecting across disciplines, seeking to interpret,
synthesis, and bring new insight on original research; interdisciplinary, interpretive and
integrative. Application is scholarship that addresses practical and social issues; community issues
define the scholarly agenda. Teaching is scholarship of disciplinary method and practice to study
and improve student learning. I use these to integrate my research, teaching and service.
“Landscape” links people, action and environment, and provides the heuristic for “disciplined
investigation” allowing me to use tools from both the physical and social sciences. This scholarship
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makes demands in my teaching, providing the integration of both Discovery into Teaching and
Teaching and/or Discovery into Application. I depict this graphically in the following figure.
How do I apply this core idea, heuristic and operational approach? Under the Four
Scholarships approach, I organize my research, teaching and service to be fundamentally and
intimately integrated. To assist with this, I use the heuristic of the “landscape” as an invaluable
integrating element. As a multifaceted concept, landscape provides the links between people, their
actions and environment. Its physical elements are measurable, but its definition reflects complex
relationships between people and their environment. It provides, simultaneously, both the data
source and the conceptual framework for my research. It also provides an essential frame for
teaching about both environment and environmental management, bringing together as it does
fabric and behaviour. The concept of “landscape” therefore provides me with the invaluable
scholarship of Integration. Furthermore, investigating landscape allows me to identify and apply
the appropriate tools for “disciplined investigation”, whether they are the physical science tools –
geology, geomorphology, palynology, etc. – I bring to bear on resolving, say, geoarchaeological
matters, or whether they are the social science tools – social construction theory, action learning,
social cognitive mapping, etc. – I use to apply environmental knowledge to contemporary issues.
Of course, this fourth scholarship also makes demands in my teaching, providing the integration
not just of the Discovery into Teaching, but, importantly, of Teaching and/or Discovery into
Application. In this way, it is imperative for me, as a science-based researcher, to apply my work
to the social sciences, to an educational agenda, and to university governance. Such integration is
articulated in two primary ways: (i) via a scholarship of education – studies of, and reflection on,
teaching and learning, and its subsequent publication and thus contribution to the wider scholarly
community; and (ii) via detailed engagement with university academic governance.
The import of the Four Scholarship approach is the demand for continual reflection and
development. This I undertake through writing, both reflective and reportage, and through formal
studies. In essence, while the University promotion criteria divide the fields of Teaching, Research
& Scholarship, and Leadership & Service, this approach merges the boundaries. For me, this
means I view a continuum of action, methods and perspectives, in which all my activities are
viewed as part of a single project.
In this way, therefore, “research” spans the scholarships of Discovery (predominantly) and, to a
partial extent, Teaching and Application (educational and environmental management research,
and informing academic governance). Similarly, “teaching” spans the scholarships of Teaching
(predominantly), Discovery (via postgraduate supervision and action learning projects) and
Application (via both environmental management projects with a strong social development
component, and through implementation of academic governance policies). Finally, “leadership
and service” are articulated through Discovery (via influence of research outcomes), Teaching (as
a teaching and learning scholar) and Application (predominantly through leadership in academic
governance).
The important point is that my work represents a coherent whole, bound together by a unifying
sense of scholarship. My central aim is to understand the details of processes of humanenvironment interactions, and I can do this through the geographical device of the landscape. This
is an agenda I have followed for three decades. By examining the landscape in its many forms and
constituent parts – its past and its present, its biological and physical nature, its social
modification and use, its cultural construction, and its politicization – I have required to develop a
broad range of tools, from both the physical and social sciences, to extract understand and
knowledge from the environment, hence the breadth of my scholarly endeavour. It is this
knowledge that I can apply, both in teaching and in engaging environmental management. And to
close the loop, teaching and the application such knowledge requires pedagogical reflection, and
so I thus integrate educational scholarship and academic governance into the rest of my work.
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